


thumbprint bruise

by watfordbird33



Series: that was the future; this is the past [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Bodhi Rook Needs a Hug, But he doesn't have a last name and I don't want to make one up, I feel like Reg should probably have his own character tag, M/M, Playing EXTREMELY fast and loose with canon, What is this thing previously called canon and now called MINE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-24 21:06:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10749822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: Bodhi turns his head against the fresher wall. When he opens his mouth, his words come out through bared teeth. Exhausted disbelief. “Can’t you see that people just don’t fall in love like this?”“Starved for contact,” Reg says, like a curse word; “of course that would be your excuse.”Bodhi closes his eyes. He says, “I don’t have an excuse.”





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> Companion to "all the different ways that we collide" and "six".
> 
> Warnings for semi-explicit sexual content, language, major character death. And if you don't like OC/canon character fics, although I encourage you to give this a shot. 
> 
> This will be two chapters. The first is Bodhi/Reg and the second will be Bodhi/Cassian. Lots of repeats from the other two, as per usual. Enjoy. :)

“I love--”

“Don’t.”

 

When they’re done, Bodhi puts a towel around himself and Reg goes out to the rentals desk and gets another stall. Just one, this time. He comes back and the water turns on again, automatically, like it’s been waiting for him. 

“I know what you were going to say,” Bodhi says, from the corner. Back wall. His towel’s soaked with spray, now, hanging off his hips, and he can track the exact hungry motion of Reg’s gaze down to his midsection.

“Yeah, I say shit, sometimes, heat of the moment and all. I forgot to warn you I’m a talker.”

Breezy; absurd.

“Warn me?” Bodhi says.

Reg looks away.

“Like you’d have had any time.”

“Ten minutes, cousin,” Reg says,  _ oh,  _ and his smile’s so fucking quick. Blink and you’d miss it but it’s there in all its glory, bold and clear, the last drink the bartender warns you off. “At least we know we can get it done.”

Bodhi closes his eyes. He can’t think, in the hot spray, every bone outlined beneath Reg’s skin. 

“I know what you were going to say,” he says again. 

The one thing he won’t let go of. He tasted the words, mouth to mouth. He cut them off abruptly with his own.

Reg’s smile falls again.

“Did you mean it?”

“‘Course I meant it.”

Bodhi turns his head against the fresher wall. When he opens his mouth, his words come out through bared teeth. Exhausted disbelief. “Can’t you see that people just don’t fall in love like this?”

“Starved for contact,” Reg says, like a curse word; “of course that would be your excuse.”

Bodhi closes his eyes. He says, “I don’t have an excuse.”

 

One towel drops, and then the other, or maybe both at once.

Reg kisses like parentheses. Like the space in between them.

(   )

(   )

Open mouths and lips and tongues, soft, soft, soft, soft, Reg’s scraped fingers in Bodhi’s hair. He teases the knots out and pulls the hair down straight until it touches Bodhi’s shoulder blades.

“I’ll be your excuse, cousin,” Reg says. “I’ll be your everything.”

 

Later, all Bodhi will remember is bits and pieces. Snips of phrases and twisted words. The physicality will be achingly sharp in his mind, but the things they said will be meaningless. Most of them, anyway, will be lies.

Five minutes tops in the tiny stall.

 

“Are we like this in every universe?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re a romantic, Bodhi. Stick with me. Thousand other worlds and in every one, are we here, fucking in this fresher, up against the wall?”

“Fucking?” Bodhi says. “If you’re deluding yourself that you’re in love, you may as well get the term right.”

“Having sex,” Reg says, with a grin, and Bodhi squirms. “Making love.”

“Making love,” Bodhi says, even though the acknowledgement of it is a confession; a gap in his logic. A bruise that has yet to heal.

“So are we?” Reg prompts. He’s smiling. He’s the cause of that thumbprint bruise. He’s the poker of the hole in Bodhi’s reasoning. “Making love in every universe, up against the wall?”

Bodhi laughs, and it’s devoid of humor. “I think,” he says, to dodge the question, “that this is the only universe that matters.”

 

Afterwards,  _ Ornery Girl _ is too small. And they don’t talk.

Bodhi doesn’t know what changed, but the thumbprint bruise has grown as wide as his hand, and it throbs in time with his heart. If he closes his eyes, he sees Reg. He hears every throwaway line his copilot’s ever said.

_ Your copilot?  _

_ They told me you were mine. _

 

Bodhi.

_ Boo-dee. _

“Put your goggles down, Bodhi. What use are they doing up there on your forehead?”

He has no inkling of the coming pain or of the upside-down, the way dark eyes will look when there’s blood filmed over the top of them. This is the way of life, after all: we can be five feet away from the end and all we see is where we are.

Such humanity: startling in its stupidity. 

Look up. 

Look  _ up. _

But Bodhi can’t breathe, and he’s a fool.

“You’re full of shit,” he says, without breath.

“Like Ornery Girl.”

Bodhi smiles, and air catches in his lungs and he can breathe again. “Fucking  _ spewing  _ it.”

“Piles and piles of it in Imperial backyards.”

Reg tastes like charcoal and storage bays. Like he’s been out too late. He moves his hands to Bodhi’s chest and spreads his fingers--breastbone, ribs. And stubble grating Bodhi’s cheek.

Bodhi wants to say,  _ Okay. _

He wants to say,  _ Who am I to know how people fall in love? _

But Reg--the bastard--beats him to it.

 

Too late, Bodhi thinks he knows the answer.

_ Are we like this in every universe? _

_ Reg,  _ he whispers, but it’s not real. He’s dreaming, or he’s dead. He can’t hear the words. They don’t reach his ears, or they never leave his mouth. 

_ We’re like this in every universe. Every single one. _

_ Except this one, cousin. _

And it’s a knife slid between his ribs. Twisting. Should have seen it coming, he tells himself, night after night, hand on his stomach like he can hold himself together. I should have seen it coming. Oh, Reg. Reg. I should have known. I should have fucking known.

 

It’s his fault. Bodhi’s. He was piloting the freighter, Reg in the latrine, when the wing clipped a hunk of space trash and sent  _ Ornery Girl _ spiraling into Aurora IV’s gravitational pull.

Later, they say it was instant, but Bodhi was there. 

He heard the screams. He knows.

 


	2. two

When the world splits, it’s for the second time. But it’s the sixth time Bodhi falls.

His cheek becomes acquainted with the floor of the ship. He can feel himself: elbow, knee, collarbone jutting. The com’s screaming and screaming and screaming and this time he’s Reg. He’s the falling one. 

Later, they say it was instant.

_ “Bodhi!” _

“Cass--”

“Bodhi, just--breathe,  _mi amor, _ breathe--just keep talking to me. Stay on the com--don’t fucking _ leave _ me!  _ Maldición,  _ Bodhi, Bodhi,  _ no-- ” _

_ Boo-dee, Boo-dee, no-- _

He’s a pair of parentheses and there’s nothing in between to stop the world from closing in, shutting down, blood and bruise and every piece of himself just peeling away from his bones.

Reg. 

Cassian.

Reg.

“Save them, yeah?” he says, and his goggles aren’t on his forehead anymore. He thinks that might be because he doesn’t  _ have  _ a forehead anymore. “Save them for me, Cass.”

“You can save them, too.”

“I can’t. I can’t remember my name. I can’t remember Reg.”

And he’s crying. Blood and tears and sweat. Bor-Gullet. What it stole.

“Bodhi. Your name’s Bodhi. Stay with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Bodhi, I’m coming. I’m running. I’m coming right now. Tell me where you are.”

“It’s not enough.”

“It has to be enough.”

“You need the plans.”

“Jyn has the plans.”

“Get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Cass, you fucking idiot.”

Tears sliding down and down, collecting in the hollow in between his collarbones, smearing his collar and the lenses of his broken goggles on the floor beside him.

“I’m here,” Cassian says, and he says it in tandem, com and mouth, falling to his knees.  “I’m here, Bodhi. I’m here.”

 

When they’re thirty years old and intertwined on a standard bunk, Cassian’s fingers in Bodhi’s hair, Bodhi cries, but it’s just a little bit. He cries for scars and wounds and  _ Ornery Girl.  _ He cries for Baze and Chirrut. He cries for Reg.

“I’m here,” Cassian says, and he says it in tandem, dark eyes and stubbly beard, Reg laughing up against the fresher wall. “I’m here, Bodhi. I’m here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm normally opposed to everyone-lives fics, but I was trying and trying and trying to write Bodhi dying and I physically could not.
> 
> Also, I'm completely aware that the stories in this series vary in weird ways. They're all like tweaked AUs of AUs. So obviously in this one, Bodhi lives, and in the last two, he died. Dialogue changes. Plot changes. I started this series with a headcanon--Bodhi in love with his ex-copilot--and each fic is a new twist off of that headcanon. AUs of AUs. Hopefully it hasn't been too confusing/annoying.


End file.
